Bride of the Red Death
by PlusSizeAngel
Summary: Fairytale of monster  Erik  and his bride  Christine . Set in alternate world of fairytales...
1. Chapter 1

I married Red Death to save my father.  
He approached us in the inn where we had escaped the snow-storm. His face was covered by red mask which was shape of the skull; he was dressed in crimson velvet; he gave me a sumptuous blood-coloured rose and made a proposal with his beautiful voice. He told us, that he had seen us in the village; that he had seen my father playing violin when I sang. If I marry him, he said, my father will live with us in his castle and his hacking cough - he does not use the word "tuberculosis" - will be treated by the best physicians of the land.  
"Yes," I said before my father managed to decline. "I will."  
I am sure he smiled behind his mask.

Persian - so he called the exotic dark man who was waiting us him with the carriage - opened the lacquered black door to us. During the trip that beautiful voice behind red mask told us about his two earlier wives. First one, who had died in the honey-moon, had been Spanish opera-singer; her celebrated Carmen, dressed in black lace-mantilla and red roses, still decorates the sumptuous painting at his living-room. Suicide by laudanum, although official reason was heart-attack. Second wife had been Persian, young girl named delightfully after jasmines; she and her son had died in child-birth.  
Now he has me, 21-year old daughter of Swedish violinist.  
"My living wife", he said, and I wondered would I find her ex-wives in sumptuous glass-coffins of carved roses, preserved as fresh and painted after death. 


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Thank you for your kind reviews! I´m sorry that the plot moves so quickly - this will be more novella than novel - and unfortunately English is not my first language. but I try to keep Leroux´s characterization - Erik will be dark character and really disfigured. Although set in fairytale world, this place has a land called Persia, too, like in our world.

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Although it is winter, my room is filled with roses - pastel, white, blood-red, all magnificent. Caged little bird greets us with the voice which had all freshness of the summer morning.

Beautiful young woman, with dark hair and eyes, dressed as a maid, jumps to take away my worn cape.

"She is the automation," Persian says. "Creation of your husband, Madam, and your personal servant."

_My __husband, _I think, while the automation maid opens the closet and starts to lay beautiful dresses to the bed. Satin, lace, flowers. Mauve, rouge, peach, white.

"Dinner is in ten minutes," Persian says and closes the door behind him.

I choose the red ball-gown - too extravagant for private dinner, but I don´t care - and maid is swirling around me, helping me to put the beautiful dress on. She puts a rose to my cleavage - red against red - and dances to open the door.

When I come down the stairs, Erik is waiting for me, still dressed as Red Death, and he offers his arm; I take it. We walk to the dinner-room, which is bright as sunny day, with more fresh flowers and an orchestra; they start to play, when we step in.

"Are they automations, too?" I ask.

"I prefer dolls to humans," he says. "And music is my composition."

It is gorgeous, powerful, still melodic music - it has freshness of the first drops of the summer rain rain and power of the storm.

"I like it," I say. "I really like it. You are a composer?"

"I am many things," he says and offers a chair to me.

Suddenly he kneels in front of me and kisses my hands. I feel touch of his skull mask and his lips.

"If you love me, Christine," he says; "it will be my salvation."

_Salvation from what? _I think, holding my breath. Then my father, dressed in new evening-clothes too, steps to the room and Erik rises.

Dinner-table is filled with bread, cheese and ruby-red wine, spicy soups which I have never tasted, delicious desserts. We are eating, orchestra is playing, and I find myself answering to Erik´s questions with growing easiness. Soon we are talking about music, dark tales from my Northern land, books Erik had read, his travels around the world.

"I soon learned to hate humans," he says suddenly. "In the Orient I was happy to torture criminals for Sultan; my victims were men, women and children." I gasp, but he doesn´t seem to notice, he is in his own thoughts. "When I eventually left, I took my friend, Persian, and my wife with me."

Suddenly the grandfather clock starts to strike midnight. Orchestra stops playing and becomes lifeless.

"It is midnight!" Erik says. "You must be tired. Goodnight, Christine; Goodnight, Monsieur Daae."

He rises and walks away abruptly, leaving my father and I to sit at the table.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Thank you so much for my Beta-reader L. Bronte!

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"Christine, this was not wise," father said when he was sitting on the side of my bed. "You don't know that man..."

I understood his meaning; I should not have gone to bed with a man I hardly know, but then my father started to cough so he could not breathe and I said: "I believe my choice was the right one."

When my father went to his own room, I locked my door, turned off the lamps, and climbed to the bed. I saw roses reflected in the moonlit mirror, and for a moment I scared myself by thinking that I had also seen a reflection of some dark figure.

Despite my fear I said to myself: "Nonsense!" and closed my eyes. I was not a child and I did not fear ghosts or Erik. When my father felt better, we — Erik and I — would separate.

The next day I saw how the roses had started to fade.

Erik kept his promise; the best doctors came to see my father and wanted to send him to a fine sanatorium in the mountains. Erik paid for everything; nothing was too good to his soon-to-be father-in-law, and I was dazzled at his side, my hand in his arm.

My father was whisked to the sanatorium, and Erik and I started to prepare our wedding. An opulent red wedding-dress, the colour of purity in the Orient lands, was merely one part of this splendid extravaganza that Erik had prepared. I found that I enjoyed these preparations very much; I enjoyed the company of Erik, and I wondered: Can there be real love under these flourishes? And when I wondered, I noticed that the roses in my room had ceased to fade.

Then one day he asked: "Can you ever love me?"

I didn't know what to say.

"Do you even like me?" He asked piteously and I hurried to assure him that I did indeed like him.

He breathed deeply and his hands rose to take away the mask. I saw his yellow, sunken face with red flaming eyes, and without a nose. He truly looked like the Devil. I had to look at my feet.

"Look at me!" He howled. "Look at me!"

I did look at him and he could not stand my eyes. He walked away. The whole castle echoed from his inhuman roar.

My father wrote to me, asking for me to visit. I asked permission from my soon-to-be husband: "Can I go?"

Erik shuddered and said, "Will you come back soon?"

"I will," I promised. Then the carriage came and drove me away.


	4. Chapter 4

Father is much better; he tells me that I don´t have to marry Erik, because he can soon play violin and pay his debt. I can live in the expensive hotel near the sanatorium and visit him every day; and I hardly notice how days turns to weeks and weather changes. It´s spring.

Someone knocks the hotel-room door. Persian has come to search me. His face show only sadness, no accusation.

"Erik is dying," he says and I know he doesn´t lie. "He wants to see you one last time."

Quickly, quickly; I send hastily scribbled note to my father and we run out; horses gallop us through the spring morning, under the snow drift of apple-flowers.

Although winter is gone, trees around Erik´s house are without leaves and flowers. I hurry inside and see candles sinking in the sea of stearin; I run and run, searching Erik. For some reason, I even go to my old bedroom.

How it is changed! All the roses are dead; one last red petal still hangs in blackened rose which is put to the water-glass on the bedside table.

Erik lays in my bed. His eyes are closed and he hasn´t his mask, but he breaths.

"Erik!" I sit on the bed and bent to kiss his forehead, despite the stench of death. "I have come home!"

His eyes are opened and he smiles weakly.

"I am happy that you came, Christine," he whispers. "Now I can die as happy man."

"But why?" I start to cry. "Please tell me, Erik, why!"

"When every rose is dead," he whispers, "I will die too, if I haven´t found someone who loves me despite my crimes."

"But I love you!" I put my head against his shoulder and I mean it in that moment, tooo. I remember only everything beautiful in him, not the crimes he had done against less-than-innocent in Persia. "I love you!"

And when my tears are dropping to his skin - his hideous, mad face, punishment for his crimes - his appearance starts to transform; slowly the ugliness melts away and he becomes handsome, middle-aged man.

He opens his eyes and smiles to me: "I think I could eat breakfast."


End file.
